It’s already gone
That was always Putin’s goal. Was known as far back as 2016.
Krasnov
Since 1997, actually, when The Foundations of Geopolitics was published. Brexit is in there, too.
So far, it’s all going pretty swimmingly, though Ukraine is putting up more resistance than anticipated.
make america hate again break american greatness again
Wrong again …
The powers that be and corporate owners seem intent on allowing Donald Trump to Sabotage US Dominance.
… dump truck Don is not that powerful or influential and you got to stop pretending he actually has anything to do with power.
Yeah. It’s an internal struggle between American oligarchs for who’d take more of the pie now that it’s almost stopped growing.
Especially notable to me that the article made its point without even getting into things like Trump effectively handing leadership in EV technology and alternative energy broadly to China, or giving the Chinese chip-making industry just the boost it needed to potentially be able to supply China’s needs on its own, or making the US so hostile to scientific reseach that China will likely end up leading the world in that as well.
Yes - he could hardly do more to more thoroughly destroy the US’s standing in the world if he set out to deliberately do exactly that.
Oddly though, that at least provides him with a bit of cover - if he wasn’t such a blithering idiot, I’d suspect that that really was his goal. But I don’t think he’s even capable of maintaining focus on a straightforward strategy, much less a subtle and multilayered one.
making the US so hostile to scientific reseach that China will likely end up leading the world in that as well.
That’s already the case
And that’s scary because the standard for scientific publishing in China was mostly shit. I haven’t kept up, but I hope they’ve cleaned up their act. No hate on China, but their actions were speaking volumes not too long ago.
I would’ve guessed that but didn’t know it. Thanks for the clarification.
When is it going to stop being “He’s so incompetent, it’s like he’s doing it on purpose!” and start being “Oh, he’s doing this on purpose…”? This has been obvious for so long now.
I’ll take Russian Asset for 1000, Alex.
No, please don’t give him that much credit. If you saw him run a casino, you’d swear he was doing it on purpose, but he isn’t. He really just is that dumb.
I’m not saying he’s not also in Putin’s pocket, but don’t try to convince me that he has the brains necessary to make sabotage look like incompetence. He’s nowhere near that clever.
There hasn’t been a doubt about his intentions for a long time. He is, however, likely taking many actions because someone told him to, he heard a sound bite on Faux News, or he perceived some slight from social media.
it doesn’t take much intelligence to destroy things under you over the course of 4-8 years. He’s very obviously incompetent because he’s doing this on purpose.
it doesn’t take much intelligence to destroy things
“A bull in a China shop” is a comparison I often use.
It’s fast and easy to break things. Any idiot can swing a sledge hammer at random stuff they don’t understand.
Fixing and building takes a lot longer. Also takes a lot more knowledge, skill and expense.
I’d say it’s part incompetence, part intentional sabotage. He truly is a fucking moron, but he also hates the US.
He’s easily manipulated by corrupt people, including those who don’t have the best interests of the U.S. at heart.
Like seeing Tim Cook gift him that golden statue so apple gets no tariffs…like everyone can see and stroke his ego.
Which is funny because its like he’s an 8 year old boy. Ohh gold. Doesn’t yet realize Platinum is worth more, etc.
Yes. The goal of this administration is and always has been to hurt America at the behest of foreign interests. We have got to stop acting surprised when the people who want to hurt America, in fact, hurt America.
Oh no! But the other option was so much worse… Right? … Right‽
Those people never believed that and they have been trolling for over a year while they gleefully watch the world burn. They come into a thread like this and giggle like the edgy teenagers and lonely 20-somethings they are because they’ve gotten a rise out of you.
They will never feel guilt or shame. The best thing everyone can do is ignore them, forget they exist, and move on.
Right there with you friend.
About time
All the Putin jokes aside, I don’t think he’s doing it for geopolitical or treasonous reasons. I think it’s mainly just a by-product of his style of interaction and competition, which exists for very logical (“logical”) reasons and which he’s been able to make work pretty well for himself.
https://snyder.substack.com/p/the-weak-strongman
Snyder says it better than I can, but basically, he is weak and stupid, but he needs to be able to dominate people around him, and so his whole strategy is to attack and weaken, because that’s his only way to be able to compete effectively. He can usually dominate the weakened version of whatever he’s attacking, in a way he never could if it was at full strength. It’s why he shows such innate and passionate violence against anything or anyone that is organized, effective, or popular: Because someday, they might turn against him, and if they did they would definitely win, and so he has to Nancy Kerrigan them before they get a chance.
Again Snyder summarizes it better, but it is also the exact same model that Putin uses, and it’s had exactly the same effect on Russia (taking it from at least a regional powerhouse and functioning country that could accomplish significant things, to being a pariah state that barely functions in the first place even internally.) The strategy only works for as long as there is no one “outside the wall” who can come into the sphere of influence in un-weakened form, and if that ever happens, then the strongman crumbles instantly into impotent rubble. To ever let one of these people get control of your country or organization is basically just a nonstop rolling catastrophe that just gets worse and worse the longer they hold on to power.
(taking it from at least a regional powerhouse and functioning country that could accomplish significant things, to being a pariah state that barely functions in the first place even internally.)
Say what you want about Putin but he has been pretty successful in getting Russia back into the global game after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Now he’s mostly doing this by dragging everyone else down so your average Russian is gaining exactly zilch from any of this, but when you look at the state of democracy all over the West you can’t say he reduced Russia’s international influence.
Back into the global game?
They collapsed from being a global superpower, to selling off their natural resources to enrich a couple of hundred of the worst people on the planet, and beating up their neighbors for oil money and mostly being ignored by most of the rest of the world unless there’s an Olympics or something. Putin didn’t cause all of that of course, but he had a huge amount to do with entrenching the systems of corruption that doomed any chance they would have had of recovering their superpower status as China or Europe did after major catastrophes happened to them.
And now, as of the last few years, they can’t even beat up their neighbors anymore. Sure, they still have a huge impact on the world stage in the form of destabilizing foreign democracies. You’re not wrong about that part. But that’s another example of my point: The whole shtick is just weakening everyone else. It won’t do anything at all to increase their military power, increase standards of living for either oligarchs or common people. It won’t help them win any of those regional wars. And it definitely won’t help them against any threat that comes from “outside the sphere” (bird flu or climate change or whatever). It’s just more Tanya Harding shit.
I disagree. This is the guy that’s openly talked about wanting to annex new territory for the US (Canada, Greenland) and set up a US controlled Gaza strip. He’s an imperialist at the core.
I would welcome the end of US dominance. Maybe if he was trying to dismantle US military bases across Eurasia or heavily reduce military spending then there would be a point to be made.
I don’t think his his tariff shenanigans has anything to do with trying to sabotage US dominance. I think it’s just a side effect of his usual attempts at personal gain. I also disagree with the notion that he’s intentionally doing Putin’s bidding. I think he’s just a useful idiot for Putin.
Comrade Krasnov doing a fastastic job for his droogs
If even half of the 49 countries with US military bases coordinated an attack on said bases, we might be able to actually start the dissolving of the American empire.
Instead you could just like… cancel the leases? I see this “rise up” sentiment repeated a ton and it just screams that people don’t understand how foreign military bases actually work. Like, rise up to get your government to just ask the US to leave. For that too, most US military bases aren’t forts or anything, you could effectively neutralize them just by blocking the beer truck from making it’s deliveries. There’s very little the troops stationed there can do to stop that besides call in the host country to deal with the problem (which is invariably what happens).
The real threats are the five-eyes intelligence gathering facilities - but there’s no government in the world that’s going to ask those to be removed, I can’t imagine what would be persuading them not to…
Yeah I would always rather see the people rising up, and a worldwide revolution would be the most effective way to make real lasting change. But yeah that’s pretty solidly a romantic fantasy at this point. That’s all it keeps boiling down to. No war but class war.
That Sun Tzu quote “don’t interrupt your enemy when he’s making a mistake” comes to mind.
The least effort and greatest impact will come from those countries staying quiet and letting Trump keep doing what he’s doing.
Sun Tzu and Trump are both artists I guess, but in different areas.
Trump’s “art” mostly involves smearing the walls with shit
Ive been scared for over a decade now that the US gov is following a similar pattern Russia did 20 years ago and that when the US loses it’s economic and cultural dominance they will start to do exactly what Russia is doing and flex military might, except with the largest military in the world and bases in damn near every country.
If I was the leader of any other country I would have already started/redoubled efforts planning on how to engage with the US as an enemy years ago. Not ‘hur durr they’re already an enemy cuz Trump dumb’, I mean drones at your doorstep your children weap at sunshine enemy.
There is every chance of this happening. We’re already seeing the start of it with Trump’s remarks on Greenland and Canada. Those aren’t just harmless quips. They’re intent to (militarily) bully anyone and everyone into compliance.
Trump’s remarks on Greenland and Canada.
Also Panama and Gaza.
If I was the leader of any other country I would have already started/redoubled efforts planning on how to engage with the US as an enemy years ago. Not ‘hur durr they’re already an enemy cuz Trump dumb’, I mean drones at your doorstep your children weap at sunshine enemy.
Yeah… that’s actually happening. It just doesn’t make sense to be super noisy about it at the moment. Anyone in Canada that has any capability to manufacture drones are getting military procurement contracts approved ridiculously fast right now. Like those kinds of things usually take years to get through the red tape, but now it’s like weeks to go from testing to procurement.
At the moment it’s only a trade war, and it would be best if that’s as far as it goes. But if Trump takes things further… yeah, there will be drones at his doorstep. I wonder what something like this could do to Mar a lago? https://youtu.be/olYVvx8TfGk
Trump and Putin are going to be together in Alaska soon, would be real opportune.
It’s be cool if the overseas bases had some balls and just said, “fuck it, we’ll just side with our hosting country.” I guess it could really happen without a mini civil war on base.
So far everyone’s done what they’ve been told or simply quit, lets see how the FBI vs Innocent Lawmakers goes down though.
Because the US isn’t at a full on tipping point on that yet, because yes, that’s when civil wars start.
US Civil War #1 started over a military base. If POTUS declares and attack on a major ally, that’s probably going to be the starting gun for the second one.
The U.S. Civil War #1 never really ended (confederate flags all over the South, institutionalized racism, legal slavery in for-profit prisons, etc.), it just went into a “cold” phase. It is certainly heating up again.
One of the very few good things he’s doing.
He has done more to destroy the U.S. empire in 7 months than anyone else in it’s entire history. Good riddance, the world will be better off.
